Feast of Starvelings
by Gene Dark
Summary: My answer to Tyanilth's unlikely Loghain threesome challenge. Loghain-Wynne-Rylock pairing. Dark themes, horrors of war, and some fairly explicit smut. NSFW.


_AN: This is my (belated) answer to a challenge set by Tyanilth. As a smut virgin, I thought the pairing of Loghain-Wynne-Rylock would be insurmountable - it's thanks to icey cold, __Josie and a lot of Antivan brandy that I'm posting this. __Thank you, icey, for sending the pics of the sexy Sigourney Weaver and Julie Christie - I bet Loghain is grate__ful too!_

_Oh - and there's an elaborate backstory - sorry about that, I just find it impossible to write short fics :)_

_For those unaware, Feast of Starvelings is set in the Death and the Maiden universe, with the main events occurring directly after Chapter Fourteen. They may or may not be canon... :) Likewise, the framing story takes place about ten years later, and is one possible future._

_This story is dedicated to Tyanilth, Josie, Shakespira and icey cold, without whom it would not have been written. Whether that's a good thing or a bad one remains to be seen..._

Motes of dust danced about the high, blank spaces of the ward, swirling on air currents, higher and softer than the thick yellow candlelight. The Templar lay on sheets stark and white as a glacier, watching a parade of faces - people she hadn't known long enough to remember - come and go like trees in the mist. The latest to stop by was young - seemingly much younger than the most junior of the Templar's recruits - and wore a sharp, false smile and a mask of elaborate patience that set the teeth on edge. All Templars not lucky enough to die against apostates ended up in Wayside Ward, being condescended to by nurses young enough to be their grandchildren.

Rylock had turned her face to the wall the day she was relieved of active duty - but the sight of the letter the nurse held in her hand caused reluctant curiosity to stir to life like flies in her chest. Rylock resisted a moment - curiosity and the craved oblivion could not live together - then the sight of the griffon seal undid her. Letters from Wardens were a rare thing since their second Ferelden exile - but the Chantry still had ways of receiving news from Montsimmard in the midst of the war. Rylock pushed herself upright with arms that had withered from what they once were - slapping aside the Sister's hand when she would have helped. The woman schooled her face into a bland smile. Looking after Templars who didn't know one end of themselves from the other guaranteed a reward in the Golden City. Rylock opened the letter with her usual curt impatience and stared at the bold, flowing, spidery scrawl. The First Warden's message was short, to the point - and contained a familiar flippancy:

_It is begun. I'll show you Templars a thing or two about going out in style._

Rylock blinked. She herself was the right age for a Templar to wink out: the First Warden was young - far too young to be going through the Calling… A brief, cold stab of regret startled her.

_I warned you not to continue that creature's research…_

"Bring me a quill." The words were dry - the voice rusty from disuse - pared down of even basic courtesy. For just a moment, the command presence was back. The Sister hesitated - then spun away and came back a moment later, carrying quill and ink in one hand and an enormous dose of lyrium in the other. Rylock stared at it - aware that she would need to write quickly, before the traces of what she wanted to say were drowned in the shadows. She didn't have to think long on the words - a ripple of wholly unexpected amusement bubbled up. Rylock could not remember ever joking in her life - she had been raised to be serious and stern because life was serious and stern - but something of the Warden's gallows humour had rubbed off.

She wrote on the bottom of the parchment - underneath the Warden's writing - her own formerly neat, spare script now so cramped as to be almost illegible:

_Anything a Warden can do, a Templar can manage faster and more efficiently._

Then she sealed the message, returned it to the Sister, and proceeded to prove the point by gulping the entire vial of lyrium - enough to hold a horse - in a single mouthful and asking for seconds. The Sister beamed - glad to see her patient being so co-operative. Wayside Ward saw a parade of former Templars - leaking, tottering, dazed, robbed of memory, hallucinating - pass through on a one-way ticket. The higher the doses, the sooner the beds became available for the next.

The Sister returned with the second dose - glittering blue liquid sparkling like gems encased in glass. Her face was serene, peaceful, smiling - the sort of face Rylock had known and resented all through her girlhood: a lanky, sullen Chantry child who had neither the face nor the faith nor any talent to make her noticed in the Maker's eyes. Other children seemed to possess something she lacked: when Rylock prayed, the words came out dry as dust, echoing in an empty room. The law passed in 5 Dragon Age, when Rylock was fifteen - which allowed women to train as Templars - had rescued her from the non-life of those Chantry children who never learned more than survival. She had felt she would be perfectly, completely loved by the Maker if only she could be Templar enough to suit. Each apostate caught was confirmation of her virtue - each drop of mage blood spilled seemed to prove she had found her calling. Yet as she stared upwards into transient flickers of memory - long-ago faces dancing like ghosts behind her eyes - time cart-wheeled back to the moment she had been most alive - and it had not been a fight against mages. She had stood beside Ferelden's armies against a foe spawned from the Black City - which had seemed fitting…

* * *

><p>…The air in the row of hospital tents - housing, in total, over five hundred tainted wounded - was little more than a fetid recycling of human breath. Failing candles flickered in a bitter wind…their dirty, turbulent glow melded with the staccato patter of rain on the tallow-coloured roof, creating a greasy lid that covered everything like a shroud. Eighty-six Bannorn infantry, twenty Templars and five Night Elves lay in this, the moribund tent. A tattered sheet grey as cobwebs hung across the entrance, closing off the outside world. In the other tents were wounded whose prognosis was not yet known, guarded by the knight Cauthrien and the men of Maric's Shield. After the triage, riots had broken out - wounded insisting they were not tainted; friends demanding to see them - and been put down with brisk efficiency. Cauthrien was the kind of soldier Rylock would have liked to number among her own. Here there was no danger of resistance - wrists chafed raw with blood and skin already beginning to slough off were tied to the pallets. The young faces were being eaten by the grey spiderwork of taint; eyes were milky and dead-looking, as though gossamer fine strands of web had been woven over them. They were dreaming in the heavy silence - fixing their fading vision on the dirty grey air of their demi-tomb. They were dreaming - staring from dark sockets with mad eyes - turning toward the possibility of an inner vision. Rylock herself saw them with pellucid clarity. A razor-edged series of concrete images: worn boots on a floor of rushes slimy with unspeakable detritus - mute piles of discarded armour stained with blood and vomit. Long ago, the willow switch that hurried children to morning prayers had woken Rylock from dreams. Now her nights were void as a plate of black glass. The Maker's will was absolute - the challenges he set were supposed to be endured, not dreamed away.<p>

From time to time, one of them would emerge from torpor and scream. These screams were entirely involuntary: produced by their organs, writhing with taint. Some laughed as they howled; others prayed. Men who could pray could hope - so they howled their prayers. Rylock knew it was too late for hope. The men the Maker called to his side would go - there was no choice. All Templars were born to die. Whether it was from darkspawn or mages or lyrium poisoning would only affect the timing and the manner of it - it wouldn't affect the certainty. Dying an old woman - dosed to the eyeballs with lyrium, dribbling, vomiting, grovelling, shouting - was the only death Rylock feared.

A harsh scraping sound made her turn. Ser Tavish was hunched forward, apelike, straining at his bonds. The madness was a fire in his eyes and his cheek twitched. Yellowish froth coated tombstone teeth and formed a thin line of scum along his lips. When Rylock had stumbled he had put out his shield to cover her; the creatures had caught him under it. Ser Tavish was the Knight-Commander of Denerim - the one who knew the men - Rylock outranked him only because of her track-record at slaying apostates and favour in the eyes of the Grand Cleric. She had faced demons, maleficarum - had cleaned an entire cell from Denerim's underground - but had found it poor preparation for the fog of war. She had had no words for the men beyond the Chant - had alternately blundered and hacked her way through the chaos, intermittently confused and icily determined. Rylock had never been able to wish things different than they were - since the Maker's will was absolute, wishing was only weakness - now, for the first time, she thought it should have been his chance, not hers.

Unlike the Warden and the Teyrn, Rylock had cleaned and polished her armour before coming here. It was stark silver as befitted a conduit of the Maker's will; the cleanliness and brightness and glitter was her way of honouring these dying. It was a glimmering incandescent shell - the body beneath felt like molten lead poured into the iron exoskeleton. She stiffened, parade-ground straight, and drew her Knife of the Divine with her gauntleted right hand. Polished, honed, the blade played with light as a mage child plays with fire. Rylock approached steadily, unwavering - reached the edge of the pallet and sat beside him. He strained at the rope with fingers clawed and a noise in his throat that was not human nor yet animal. From his torn wrists the blood trickled down and clung in the hair of his forearms with the stickiness of melted chocolate. His eyes flitted and wandered about the room with the irregularity of moths. With each jerk of his head the froth sprayed from his mouth and splattered his chest and arms.

Rylock stood still for several moments, considering how best to do this. She owed him - owed all the twenty Templars - the honour of the knife and her prayers rather than the insidious draft of a mage's poison. Worst, she decided, would be weakness - another pain that did not kill. Rylock was a solitary mage-hunter - a lone predator rather than a soldier - and it was the years of executing apostates: clinically, quickly, painlessly, without hesitation and without mercy, that came to her aid now. Having determined the order of her moves, she began: ripped the purple sash from her waist and wrapped it about the hilt to prevent the blood spatter to her face - placed the tip with surgical precision between the fourth and fifth rib, over the heart - gripped the knife with both hands and drove it downwards with all her weight behind it.

_"Here lies the Abyss, the well of all souls, from whose emerald waters __doth life begin anew…come to me, my child, and I shall embrace you. In my arms lies Eternity."_

Rylock withdrew the knife, sliding it free of the agonized body now relaxed in death. She drew her iron-clad fingers across the staring eyes, closing them with the waxen peace of an effigy, and with quick, deft moves untied the arms and folded them across his chest. She wiped the blade upon the filthy sheets but did not take time to unwrap the blood-sodden sash - she would need it again very soon.

She rose, turned - and nearly collided with the shrouded form of the healer mage. Garbed from head to foot in a protective cloak coarse as sackcloth, she might have been a pilgrim or a penitent - but there was no mistaking the blue glow of her hands nor the lyrium-bright crackle of fury in her eyes. Chill, dark rage rose in Rylock - at herself, for becoming so distracted she had failed to sense a mage's presence.

"Knight-Commander," the mage said icily, her cut-glass cheekbones bristling with teak-hard arrogance, "I have prepared a potion to ease these poor men's passing. Is it really necessary to butcher them in their beds? Is that what the last sight of their fellows should be? Even Templars…"

Rylock drew herself up with the manner of the soldier, voice dry, distant, emotionless: "_Even_ Templars? My men will die by a sword of mercy as Andraste did; not by a mage's poison. They deserve nothing less." Rylock strode forward, forcing the mage to step aside, though she was careful to keep the blood-sodden sash away from the healer's body.

To Rylock's Templar senses, the mage seemed to burn with the glow of a white-hot sun, veins running with power like a river swelling its banks, an unseen cloud of inchoate energy crackling around her like the air before storm. A Templar's powers felt very different: irrigation within a parched desert - continually needing to be replaced. A mage replenished the river from within themselves; could hold that power in their hands and pour it out. The luminous blue eyes looked like water - they had brightened and seemed full, as though they might spill over. It was not the first time Wynne had looked at her with indignation…

…_The female mage was glaring at her, arms folded across her heavily pregnant body. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her short __pale hair was plastered to her scalp in limp feathers._

_"So - you've been ordered to take my child from me, when the time comes."_

_Eighteen-year-old Rylock was standing with military correctness in the doorway. The armour that encased her body was polished__ to the highest standard she could achieve._

_"All children of mages must be raised by the Chantry," she said without inflection, "It is better so. The mage will serve the Maker by remaining within the Circle as the Order dictates - and the child will be __raised to do His will. What life would the child of a mage have otherwise?" Serving the Chantry meant they had a place and purpose - and would not have children of their own, to risk passing on their curse._

_The mage was looking at her very intently. "I wo__nder if your parents would agree?"_

_Rylock blinked, nonplussed. Taken aback by the reference to parents she could not remember, she found a safe answer direct from catechism: "I am sworn to the Revered Mother; the Maker is my only Father."_

_Softly, the mag__e asked: "And do you ever wonder what your life might have been like had things been different?"_

_"But things could not have been different - the path I am on is the path the Maker has ordained. There is no place for me to be other than here."_

_The mage wa__s looking at her very strangely: as though she hovered on the verge of laughter - or tears. She seemed to be too many things at once and it made Rylock uneasy. Rylock herself was not too many things, but too few._

_"And that is a travesty in and of itself."_

_Then an odd thing happened. Rylock met the mage's eyes and for a moment or two she didn't think she could have told anyone her name, let alone where she was. Nothing like that had happened to her before and it made her distrust the woman. It occurred to __Rylock that the most dangerous mages would not be the ones who _looked_ evil. She vowed to watch this one very carefully…_

Rylock had not noticed the grizzled, dark-shrouded form of the Teyrn until he spoke. He was standing beside the bed of one of his own soldiers, watching from the shadows. The glittering eyes were ringed with purple above the broad, strong sweep of long cheekbones; the ashen curve of his smile might have been irony or pain. During the battle, he had ridden with the speed of a hawk from unit to unit, creating order from chaos, before dismounting to join the infantry. She recognized, but could not have planned, the neat tactics that had trapped the darkspawn between the Templars' iron fist and the Drakon River.

"So," he murmured, voice a pale shadow of the bellow that had carried across that field, "There is some fire in your veins that isn't lyrium."

Rylock stiffened. The use of lyrium to create a Templar's powers was only the physical expression of an experience and values that to her were sacred. The ingestion of lyrium was a fierce and solitary act of will, shielded by custom and transmuted by prayer. All Templars knew perfectly well that the ability to cleanse and smite came from the blue vial and not directly from the Maker - they knew also that it was their faith that transmogrified the substance - said to be the waters of the Fade - into an expression of His light. It was why teaching a Templar's powers to those outside the Order was blasphemy: to have the transubstantiation occur without recourse to the Maker. Some vague awareness of being more admired than mocked filtered through to her and took the edge off her anger - that and the fact that she was simply too tired to object.

"Come now, Madam," he said to the mage with surprising gentleness - the gravelly shout reduced to a low rumble - "We can surely grant these men the dignity of dying after their own custom."

"I should have expected such from you, Loghain Mac Tir!" the mage snapped, "After the thousands who died at Ostagar, these poor souls must surely be a pittance."

The Teyrn seemed to swell. The fetid air darkened around him, drawn inward like the nucleus of a storm. He stood in a fury that seemed to absorb into itself all sound, condensed by silence like the core of a furnace.

"Eight-six of my men are dying here - men I picked, trained, men I loved like family. Five Night Elves I have known for twenty years - men who fought for Ferelden while you were cloistered in your ivory tower. Don't ever tell me what my position means, do you hear me? Never. I won't warn you again."

He turned on his heel, strode away, leaving a silence that ached like a wound.

In the far right corner of the tent, the Warden approached one of the knights of Redcliffe, one of the mage's vials clutched tightly in her hand. At the sight of the amulet the man wore around his neck she visibly blanched, shaking so hard that most of the liquid splashed over her own tunic. Rylock's mind swung backward to the day - had it really been less than a week ago? - she had seen the Warden place that amulet around the man's neck, delivering a mangled version of Transfigurations 10 in her low, musical voice:

_"And the Light shall lead you safely through the paths of this world…and you shall know no fear of death - for tod__ay is not your day to die: I will make sure of that."_

_The scales of the High Dragon worshipped as Andraste glittered like rubies around the spring-steel body - a mass of ribbons sparkled like butterflies amid the frivolous red braids. The Elven face was f__lushed with conviction, uplifted - the lucent eyes fixed on some inner vision._

_It was hard to know which was the more outrageous: the casual misquotation or the false promise. Rylock strode towards her, and as the knight bade them farewell with unseemly h__aste __she planted herself right in front of the Warden and stood glaring down at the much smaller woman._

_"You have no right to make promises you can't keep, Warden. An honourable death in the Maker's service is all you can promise."_

_Rylock expected more __flippancy - or perhaps the sort of fast-talking salesmanship with which the Warden had swayed the Banns. Instead she was faced with a kind of grave alertness._

_"I know. But do you think the thought of dying - however honourably - will make a man fight bett__er? Immortality can be a self-fulfilling prophecy."_

_Something in that did not fit Rylock's view of the world, though she was not used to articulating her own beliefs. She tried, and the Warden waited patiently, with none of her usual chatter._

_"Isn't it e__nough to find strength in fighting well, in duty to the Maker, in a common goal?"_

_The Warden blinked. She looked, for a moment, utterly startled. Then a slow radiant smile spread across her face._

_"Do you know," she said, astonished, "You reminded me so __much of - someone - just then." She chuckled softly, "I won't tell you whom - you'd both be insulted. Well, I'll answer as I answered her: that's enough for the best of us, but not the rest. My knights are like me: we need the - symbol - of something, when__ the reality seems far away. A lie that creates hope can be nobler than truth that brings despair." She looked, for a moment, right into Rylock's eyes - then gradually the cocky manner seeped back: the Warden was never without it for long. "You lead in you__r way, Knight-Commander, and I'll lead in mine."_

_Rylock remained unimpressed. She met the cocky grin with a withering cut of the eyes and stated:_

_"Slaying the false Andraste does not make you the real one."_

_The Warden's face split into a smile of __genuine appreciation. One hand moved in an elegant gesture – that of a duellist acknowledging a hit. Then she bowed, turned, and strode away, with a bounce unsuited to the gravity of the situation..._

The Warden looked much smaller now. Instead of the Dragonscale she wore only a stained, oft-patched tunic. The amber eyes were only a corona around empty black pupils. Her face was so white and pinched she resembled an old woman. The black pattern of stitches lay like a caterpillar across her left cheekbone. She had refused healing for it. Foolish pride, the mage had called it – but Rylock understood perfectly. She would have done the same. The Warden had no words for the knight – only stroked his forehead as she raised the vial to his lips. Rylock had thought she would be glad to see the Warden taken down a peg or two, but could find no satisfaction in it. Strangely, she preferred her cockiness, however annoying, to her defeat.

The Teyrn had also changed out of armour. He wore only a sweat-stained gambeson, and went bare-handed among his troops, seemingly not afraid of getting tainted blood on his skin. He offered neither words of comfort nor words from the Chant – simply sat by the bedside of each of his soldiers, as he might have sat beside them off-duty in a tavern, and recalled the battle. He knew every man by name – seemed to have personally witnessed each act of heroism – and it was this, as much as his hawk's command of the battle, that made Rylock feel even more deeply her failings as a commander. As the soldier's deeds were recalled to him the young, ravaged face twisted in a pained smile; some life seemed to come back into the pale deathmask - he bragged a little, and essayed a joke. When the Teyrn offered the vial it was as casually as he would have offered a drink – the man took it, drank deeply, and settled back with a satisfied sigh. The Teyrn sat with him until the end, when he closed his eyes and breathed deeply like a man who has just completed the most exhausting race of his life. Rylock looked away.

She was half-aware of the healer approaching the Teyrn; of Loghain looking up warily.

The mage's face was tight-drawn and contained an odd, closed fierceness.

"I...feel I should admit...I may have been wrong about you, Loghain Mac Tir."

The shadow of a smile touched the grim, hard features. He cut his eyes to Rylock in a moment of humour, soldier to soldier, at the mage who had to pick the absolute worst time to make an emotional admission. But the eyes he turned to the healer were surprisingly kind.

"As it is a rather brave thing to admit a mistake, I will only say: thank you."

Raw, teak-boned humour danced across Wynne's cut-glass face.

"Yes, well, it won't happen often."

Quietly, under the yellowish strands of thick candlelight, the four worked through the dust-choked air, the first gossamer strands of understanding woven between them, like the thread with which Wynne had stitched the Warden's wound, mending tears.

At last, when the only breaths came from the four of them, and the tent lay shrouded in a vast stillness, the Teyrn beckoned to the three of them.

"This tent gets burned, and everything in it."

Leaving everything behind, the four stepped outside into the heavy rain that spread stinking mud across the valley of death. Some of the taint and filth and detritus that clung to Rylock's armour was washed away; she gazed up bleakly at sky the colour of slate. The Blightstorm had passed, but the droplets still glistened with an oily sheen.

"Fire won't burn here. No fire at all."

"There you are wrong," the mage said, gazing up at the taller Templar with the same sort of look she had worn when facing Loghain, "Magefire will."

Magefire. For a moment, a chill like a cold sweat danced over the surface of Rylock's skin.

_...The fireball was a blazing corona, many times brighter than the sun. As he leapt in front of them, shielding them, Rylock saw Ser Otto as she saw him for all time: intense, absorbed, beautiful, calm and austerely bright. Then the fire took his hair, his face, his eyes, his fingertips. Rylock plunged her hands into the inferno, grabbed his shoulders, pulled him backward - Ser Tavish, standing behind her, was calling on him to hold on. The pain was sickening, impossible; the skin on hands and forearms seared to her gauntlets like meat on gridiron. The mage, surrounded by glyphs that protected him from his own magic, was laughing - sure she could not use her sword, disregarding the burned hands for he knew what pain was in them._

_Rylock threw herself forward, all her weight behind the burning gauntlets. Like red-hot, twin maces, they crushed the hateful, laughing face; pulped jaw and nose and teeth. Then she fell to her knees atop him. Pain crushed her; she choked on the stench of her own cooked arms..._

Stench. Wynne was beginning to cast - small tongues of flame shooting from up-raised finger-tips. The heat and scent of burning mingled with the heavy, damp loam of mud and decay. Rylock gritted her teeth and took a step forward, standing beside the caster. Was it the desire that the mage should not have everything her own way? The sense that only the Chant could transmute a thing of ugliness and pain and destruction to cleansing light? Or simply the knowledge that her men deserved her prayers? Rylock wasn't sure.

The mage had cast aside the brown cloak - soiled beyond repair; now stood revealed for what she was. The blue Enchanter's robe swirled about her as the power she called sucked the air towards her, as though she were the eye of a storm. Her eyes - lyrium-blue - crackled with anger. Her hair, loose from its bun, framed her taut face like white fire. Long elegant fingers jabbed like accusing points at the rain-washed, luminous sky, as though she blamed the Maker personally. A strange, fiercely-eager expression shone on pale, sweat-gleaming skin. She spoke, soft-well-modulated voice rising and falling in the spidery language of magic. Rylock spoke her own prayer as a counterpoint, orange light flickering upon silver armour so that she stood illuminated in a lurid, bronze glow...

…_The Light shall lead them safely__  
><em>_Through the paths of this world, and into the next. __  
><em>_For they who trust in the Maker, fire is their water.__  
><em>_As the moth sees light and goes toward flame,__  
><em>_They shall see fire and go towards Light… __  
><em>

As she spoke, Rylock remembered a time before fire had acquired the resonance of pain and disfigurement. Disjointed images swirled in fragments as the jagged flames forked downward, striking the tent:

_...The pale, thin, work-callused fingers of the girl she had been, hesitantly reaching out to touch the representation of Andraste's Pyre. A quick, surreptitious touch, for strength, before she was called to Revered Mother Leanna's office. In sermons, the clerics spoke of cleansing, of transmutation, of redemption. These were concepts outside Rylock's experience. To her, the indomitable figure wreathed in flames could represent one thing only: Endurance..._

_...Tiny bubbles of thought and discovery and meaning kept inside like treasures that would be torn from her if she spoke of them to a soul. Gold: the colour of belief..._

_...The campfire shared by Rylock and Ser Guy on their first mission. The rain hissed and spattered upon her Templar armour, plastered her short hair to her scalp. Ser Guy had got a campfire going within the shelter of a small cave - he gestured her towards it, waving a languid hand._

_"Gah - no apostate's going to give us trouble in _this_ downpour. There's one thing they value more than freedom and that's their own comfort. One whiff of our cookfire and he'll turn __himself in."_

_Twenty-year-old Rylock relaxed and sighed in contentment, sure he was right. The fire made yellowish sparks that danced towards the heavens, seemed to become part of the first pinpricks of stars. As they shared the stew - cooked by Rylock and flavoured by Guy's Orlesian herbs - Rylock remembered his many lessons in spar, his words when she finally beat him: "Now I know why they call you Broomstick: you hit hard and sweep clean!" - the words that had transmuted the mocking childhood nickname to something to be proud of. She smiled. She wasn't smug. The ugly duckling hadn't transformed into a swan. But she had found the Maker - and He had seen her. She did not feel Him during prayer or in the Chantry. But when she sparred, or when she did His work, she was aware of His presence, close as her own shadow. Except she was the shadow, and He was light..._

The tent was illuminated by a nimbus of white light: tongues of flame that balled, billowed upward, shot towards the roiling sky. The shimmering curtain of rain glistened like seeds of light, scorched before they reached the earth. The death-shroud of sackcloth shrivelled like corpse-rags, leaving only the framework standing, like the bones of some giant creature. Then it, too, was consumed by the blaze, burning like a rage demon with misshapen fingers clawing the air. At last the entire structure collapsed inward, white-covered bodies ignited like stars. Through it all, the mage seemed serene, at peace: her eyes reflected the flames like blue suns, her queenly profile glistened with sweat, her breaths came fast and shallow. And there was a look of ecstasy on her face; of exultation...

…_The Veil holds no uncertainty for them,  
>And they shall know no fear of death, for the Maker<br>Shall be their beacon and their shield, their foundation and their sword…_

Rylock finished her prayer, saluted the dead, then turned, in silence. Behind her, the Warden gave a soft sob. She was standing with head bowed: eyelids like peeled shrimps, face streaked with sweat and soot. Rylock was surprised to see the Teyrn rest a gnarled, war-hardened hand on her shoulder. The mage closed her eyes. Rylock felt the magic drain from her, as though her life's blood were flowing from a wound. No longer an object of beauty and terror - no longer, to Rylock's senses, feeling like a mage at all - she looked like what she was: a fellow mortal being. Exhausted, barely able to stand. She stared at Rylock without recognition. In her eyes was a look of ancient sorrow: the sorrow of one who has been permitted to enter a realm of lambent, perilous beauty and who now finds herself, once more, cast down into the grey rainswept world. Unthinking, Rylock supported her, one arm across the shoulders.

The Warden faced her, amber eyes soft as the light from that long ago campfire.

"That was beautiful," she said, "Thank you. Both of you."

The unexpected thanks startled Rylock. At the thought of how that prayer should have been delivered she felt a wisp of childhood envy: residual, utterly unworthy.

"You would have done it better," she said gruffly, "Revered Mother Boann used to say: when you sing the Chant, you pray twice."

The Warden smiled at the mention of a woman they both knew, but shook her head. "These men were soldiers," she said. Her voice broke a little, but when she continued it was quite steady: "It was better your way."

The sincerity - the grace - of the reply touched Rylock, though no sign showed on her impassive face. Then, looking at the whole group, with that smile that pulled them all together, the Warden said:

"I think the four of us have earned a drink. I have some Ovaltine in my tent." She gestured towards the tent - a new structure, much larger than the old, that had been "found" by her followers. It was made of fine gold cloth and studded with ornamentation: the ostentatious tent of a noble - or a General.

The mage raised her head from where she had been resting on Rylock's shoulder. Some of her acerbic bite had come back. "Ovaltine? I want brandy, dammit!"

The Warden smiled. The prayer and her tears had eased some of the tension in her face. "Then you shall have brandy! Loghain - would you do the honours?"

"Certainly, Warden. I have a twenty-year-old Antivan in my tent..."

"Goodnight, Warden," Rylock said, very decidedly. "Mage - Teyrn. I shall see you in the morning." Normally, she would not even have bothered with goodbyes - but after what they had just shared she felt something needed to be said. She put aside her ashamed, half-smothered regret before she knew it for what it was.

A slender arm reached upward and squeezed her shoulders in a barroom embrace. The Warden.

"Now, don't be foolish, Knight-Commander. You know perfectly well that what you need is...to discuss tomorrow's strategy with the Teyrn. Isn't that right, Loghain?"

"Indeed," replied the Teyrn, "This battle was only the beginning. I wish to share with you my plan to trap the darkspawn between Ostagar and Redcliffe."

This was a reason Rylock could accept. As if that were not enough, the mage gave her a faintly challenging stare.

"What's the matter, Ellen?" she asked - her deliberate use of Rylock's first name a reminder that she had indeed known the Templar a long time at the Circle Tower, "Afraid you might enjoy it?"

Rylock frowned, needled. "Very well," she said curtly. In truth, her need to make sense of the battle to come - to make some good come from the overwhelming confusion and sharp, sordid anguish of today - had already decided her. She must be the commander her men deserved: must learn from this man. Even more than the Warden's charm and the mage's challenge, it was the Teyrn's certainty - his ability to create order from chaos - that drew her, as if it could be transferred from the owner to the needy.

"Hah!" the Warden exclaimed exultantly, patting Rylock on the back. "Brandy and company are much better for you than the rug and the drug."

Rylock took the flippant reference to the Templars' evening ritual of lyrium and prayers with admirable restraint, though unable to help an annoyed grimace and slight glance heavenward. She could hardly refuse now - not without making herself look foolish. Surprisingly, it was the Teyrn who played peacemaker once more:

"Now, now, Warden. What happened to "polite"?"

"I think the darkspawn took my manners."

"Humph. There was nothing else worth taking." The Teyrn's voice held the note of familiar banter, worn down to comfort. The Warden giggled and rolled her eyes. As they headed toward the tent a few curious eyes studied them. The soldiers were already celebrating: away from the hospital tents, the noise of laughter and cussing and shouting, the yowl of cats and the high, pure notes of an Orlesian-accented singer rose in a wave. When they reached the outside of the General's tent Rylock removed her armour, helped by the Warden. She obviously had experience with plate, handling things as deftly as any squire. Once the supporting shell was removed, Rylock's gambeson, tunic and trousers felt abnormally light, as though she were floating. She wore pain like a fiery embrace, and knew the Teyrn and Warden were in the same state.

The Teyrn's tent was a far simpler affair than the Warden's overblown monstrosity. Spacious enough to accommodate a large collection of maps, a desk, a cabinet and three chairs, but devoid of ornamentation. He had made himself snug, like an old campaigner. Rylock found herself studying the maps along one side. He lit a candle, and the mellow glow played upon the ancient parchment, making dotted trees and roads and towns ripple as if in motion.

"Oooh - you put up the one I gave you!" the Warden exclaimed, "The copy I made of the Circle Tower's "Botanist's Map of Thedas". I still have the original - over my bed at home. Ser Otto bought it for me."

Rylock raised an eyebrow. "He would do better to buy you a copy of the Chant. Perhaps then you would stop misquoting the Canticles."

"Nah - I'm sure the Maker doesn't mind me adding my own touches. Otherwise he'd have made me a scribe and not a storyteller. Besides, I already own the illustrated version. I'll lend it to you sometime..."

Loghain opened the mahogany cabinet to reveal a distinguished-looking bottle. Its rich amber liquid caught the light. Tiny reflections danced off the surrounding crystal glasses. He poured for his guests first - Wynne, then Rylock - and was just about to share with the Warden when she shook her head, jumped up, and raced outside. "Back in a minute!"

Rylock held the glass to her lips. The coolness did not register through her scarred palms, but the liquid made a mellow trail from her lips to her stomach that soothed pain and exhaustion. Her bruises ached deeper; her eyes burned hotter. She fought the lassitude, reminding herself she had come here to discuss strategy, but the Teyrn seemed in no hurry to begin.

The Warden returned - carrying a bottle of some lurid pink liquid. She poured the sparkling drink into her glass, and offered it around. Everyone shook their heads. As a Chantry Child, Rylock had no heritage to speak of, but her adult status as a knight had lent her some knowledge of good wine. This, though it bore a passing resemblance to pink champagne, was nothing of the sort - it was cider, flavoured with sugar and berries. She pointed this out to the Warden, thinking she had been misled by some clever salesman.

"I know it is," the Warden said proudly, "Alarith makes it back home. It's a far cry from the white stuff we used to drink at the docks. My tastes have matured since then."

Rylock carefully did not look at the mage and Teyrn. Having been the butt of many jokes as a young woman - a six-foot, cold, female Templar was an easy target for them - she had no desire to make fun. As Loghain, Wynne and Rylock had the three chairs, the Warden curled up, cross-legged, at the mage's feet. Wynne placed one hand lightly upon the young woman's shoulder.

"It's certainly better than _that_ stuff," the Warden finished, pointing an accusing finger at the brandy bottle as though it had personally offended her, "That brandy makes me sad."

"Sad? How so?" Loghain challenged.

The Warden's expression switched from humour to maudlin sadness within the space of a few heartbeats.

"How long has it taken to reach its present state?"

"Twenty years."

The Warden nodded, as if the Teyrn had just confirmed something. Her eyes, encircled by a ring of shadow, hinted at some private message. "Twenty years of care - of nurturing - of growth - gone in a few moments. Don't you think that is sad?"

The Teyrn clearly understood the message that Rylock - and the mage, from the woman's puzzled expression - could only guess at. He looked suddenly old and tired. But he shook his head and snorted.

"Nonsense. You're not fit to drink yet."

At once, sadness vanished from the Warden's face in a fit of feminine pique. Stung, she shot back, "You're just too old to appreciate me!"

Loghain only grunted in amusement and poured himself another glass. Rylock saw - to her surprise - her own was empty. She made only a half-hearted protest when the Teyrn refilled it. He helped the mage to another tumbler-full and Wynne knocked it back with practised ease. By the time he unrolled the campaign map and spread it across the desk Rylock was having some difficulty focusing. Despising her own weakness, she squinted determinedly.

"Our intelligence reports a second, larger mass of darkspawn directly south of Lake Calenhad. Our present forces are too depleted to engage them in the open. But if the forces of the Bastard Prince at Redcliffe can drive them toward us, we can break them upon the rock of Ostagar." A flicker of pain crossed the hawk features, banished in an instant. The candle flame was like shining oil upon the warrior's cheekbones. There was a small scar on the right side. The smoother skin there caught the light better, glittered jewel-like.

"As should have been done before," Wynne stated. Loghain stiffened, clearly expecting to hear again the full tale of his misdeeds. Rylock remained silent. She knew there must be a reckoning for Loghain's consorting with Uldred - for his snatching of a Blood Mage from the Chantry's justice - for his involvement in slavery: but she did not believe him guilty at Ostagar. His retreat had been borne of the same principle as the Rite of Annulment: that the safety of the many outweighed the lives of the few. Privately and to the Maker, she acknowledged that her own was the greater guilt: because she had obeyed the Chantry's directive to remain in Denerim. It was better to be guilty of failure than guilty for not having tried.

"Madam, I'm aware…"

Wynne held up a hand for silence. It fluttered in the dimness like a blind, white cave-creature. Long fingers adept at casting spells seemed to undulate. Shadows accentuated her high, sharp cheek-bones, intense, seeking eyes, the furrows of thought upon her forehead. She seemed, oddly, to be several selves at once. The mask that everyone saw: of age and wisdom. The great beauty she had been, the echoes of licentious self-indulgence still etched across her face. Everyone said the mages of the Tower had only one diversion: and from the stories about Wynne it was certainly true. And beyond that, the smoothness and stillness of marble: the dead weight of long years behind stone walls that made a person very young, and at the same time, very old. The usual hard focus of her eyes was struggling; she seemed to be trying to bring the different selves into alignment. At last, indefinably as a change in the weather, her features softened.

"You took a gamble, and you lost. Had things turned out differently you might have been a hero. Win the next battle for us, and you will be. The long run can be very long."

Bitterness warped Loghain's grin, made it cruel. "So I'm to be forgiven and loved if I win battles, and cursed if I lose?"

Wynne shrugged, unconcerned. "Mages have lived with that knowledge for generations. That's something we have in common, Loghain Mac Tir."

A low, dark chuckle from the Teyrn acknowledged the point. Rylock thought to herself that it should not be that way - mages and soldiers might be considered tools of war but it should give them neither credit nor blame. Only choices could do that. High principles did not equate to fortunate circumstances. But the words were too much for her self-consciousness, her fragile sense of herself. Used to keeping her thoughts behind impenetrable silences, Rylock said nothing as the Teyrn refilled her glass for the third time.

"Cheers," said Wynne, clinking her glass against both of theirs. The brandy was warmth, a down-reaching fire. Rylock felt the aura of heat solidifying around the three of them, as if unseen forces had conspired to create this odd alignment and were struggling to hold them in place. The new dynamic created an awkwardness between them. She was relieved when the Warden broke the tension by suddenly yawning hugely, rolling over on her side, and sprawling backward across Loghain's bedroll. The empty bottle of cider clattered across the floor.

"I love you all. I love the three of you desperately - but now I must sleep…"

"Not on my bed, you don't," Loghain growled - but the Warden ignored him. She raised one leg in the air, grabbed her own ankle, and wrestled unsuccessfully with her boot.

"Would you mind helping me out here?"

"That's a very good question," said Loghain seriously, dropping his chin into his hands, "I'm glad you asked it. The answer, of course, is: Yes! I would mind."

The Warden let the leg drop and stuck out her lower lip, face crumpling in a look of mulish defiance. "Well that's just rude." She rolled pointedly away from Loghain and curled up like a boiled prawn, her arms around her head and knees drawn to her chest. Her tunic had ridden upward to expose the faint ridges of a past flogging, overlaid by the clawmarks of some huge creature. A soft snore told the Teyrn what she thought of him.

Rylock thought it high time that she, too, retired for the night. She rose with military correctness - but her usual dignity was spoiled by a sudden lurch forward. She grabbed the edges of the desk, trying to give the impression that she had merely bent to take a last look at the map, and straightened up. She turned smartly, took several long strides to the tent flap, and wrestled for embarrassing moments with the sash before opening it and stepping out into the shimmering water-loud night. Her armour lay at the side of the tent: the breastplate, pauldrons, gauntlets, sabatons and long hauberk were plied neatly, like inert silver sentinels. Rivulets of rain turned the blood of her own comrades into an oily, reddish-black tint. Memories of all her dead swirled in the air. Her heart felt like lead; heavy and cold. The iron vise of exhaustion gripped her body. She gathered up the armour - discipline driving her to wash it, and herself, before she slept. She was so used to squashing her own inclinations that the act of will came naturally, without thought. Carrying the awkward load, she careered past several tents on her way to her own, to fetch soap and cloth. The second time she crashed into one she realized she was drunk. This had never happened before. It embarrassed her. She picked her way carefully northward, toward higher ground and a patch of the Drakon River not fouled by the detritus of war, hoping that none of her soldiers could see her. A shadow had detached itself from the night and was following her. Not as close as the shadow of light that was the Maker's presence, but close enough that she could hear the solid, heavy bootfalls. She did not turn around.

She reached a valley surrounded by an encircling copse of leafless trees. Wet grass sloped downward to a bend in the river that formed an iron-grey crescent. The cloud-drenched sky cloaked the stars - the night and the water seemed to be one - darkness so thick she could wash her hands in it. A dream-like lassitude was on her: her hands felt like pieces of wood, with no connection to her brain, as she bent down at the river's edge and began to wash her comrades' blood from the iron links of her mail. She worked methodically, her body a tool, and when the work was completed she stripped off tunic, boots, trousers and underclothes and waded into the stream. The icy wind and water played about warm, sweat-sodden skin like knives of fire. Her breath formed ghostly curlicues that rose to the throbbing sky; the night was a living entity that enshrouded her. As when she fought, she felt both utterly inconsequential and supremely important: on one level, a mote of nameless light - on another, a fulcrum around which the chaos swirled. The heavy bootfalls upon the grass - the scrape and tear of cloth - seemed no more than part of her surroundings. She lathered the soap in hands that could not feel it - the skin from fingertips to elbows both silken and rubbery, unevenly healed; in places puckered, in places satin - and spread it across shoulders, breasts and belly in quick, business-like strokes. The sudden touch of a hand on her shoulder made her blood, leaden with alcohol, freeze in her chest. Memories of the day - the battle - the darkspawn - seemed to narrow like the tightening of a noose, closing in. She breathed out slowly, recognizing the gnarled, war-hardened, slightly crooked fingers as the ones that had handed her the glass. The scent of leather and iron and musk - the sweat that ran from him rank with energy - the breath on the back of her neck warm with brandy and spices - confirmed it. The Teyrn had every right to be bathing here, if he wished. Still, she would not turn. To be naked in the presence of a man was a sin to one who had taken her vows; when circumstances forced it, she and her fellow Templars always turned their backs.

He withdrew the hand - she caught the scent of sage soap as he worked it into a lather. It shocked her when he spread the lather not over himself but her own back! Callused fingers found points that created warmth and then drowsy relaxation - he traced sharp shoulderblades and the ridges left by Mother Leanna's chastisements - moved lower across the base of her spine. As he lightly brushed her buttocks and thighs, she suddenly realized his intent. Nonetheless, the touch of his hand on her breast startled her. She reached upward to push it away, but he resisted. The moment was swift - the clash over almost before it began. The dreamlike unreality reclaimed her. He ran his fingers lightly across her small high breasts and flat hard stomach: the body of a woman who has never borne a child, nor suckled. When he teased nipples already raised from the cold she felt a jolt like some alien electricity right down to the centre of her body. The skin that she wore like armour around her will was alive in a way it had never been; its surface was voices. The icy needles of rain and the warmth of his fingertips played about it like unknown musical notes. She swallowed hard, struggling to gather herself. She made an effort to speak. Her normally dry, clipped, expressionless voice wavered slightly, not quite steady. Ashamed, she tried again. Sheer will sculpted the words to clear, cold precision:

"This changes nothing. I will still seek justice on the Chantry's behalf: for the men you imprisoned; for your slavery."

She felt, rather than heard, the low rumble of laughter deep in his chest. "I know," he acknowledged.

"I intend - "

"Why don't you shut up?" It was said without rancour; politely - he offered it as a genuine alternative she might consider. It silenced her. When he grasped the taut muscles of her shoulders, turned her to face him, she did not resist.

She felt the heat and solidity of him: the shoulders like an ox, the thick dark hair that ran from his chest, down the hard rolling muscles of his stomach, to his groin. She smelled his warmth and his breath; his sweat and his sex. There was no fat on him; all his muscles were outlined clearly under his skin. And the sweat emphasized the scars, making them catch the meagre, watery moonlight, glinting. He had been cut and cut - part of his chest looked like someone had thrust a lance through it, and he hadn't been able to grow enough tissue to refill the wound. Rylock thought of Andraste's Pyre - of the symbol she had touched, long ago, for strength - felt this scarred hulk of muscle and sinew representing the same thing: the endurance of an old, gnarled oak that had grown up in the teeth of a storm. Hesitantly - a transient echo of the child she had been - she reached out to touch his chest. But stopped. She could not feel him through her own scars - had to imagine how it would feel using her other senses, as she had retrained herself to wield the sword of mercy by balance and instinct and spatial awareness. He was standing so close her nipples brushed the hair across his chest - she realized for the first time that he stood no taller than she. This seemed to please him - he ran his fingers through the short hair at the nape of her neck with an odd familiarity, as though re-creating an old pattern. Then he tilted her head to one side and kissed her.

Rylock had never been this close. It shocked her: the sudden nearness of the hawk's face and savage cheekbones - the clear blue eyes that were flat and cool and impersonal as a bird of prey's - the scents of his wet hair and cold-chastened skin - the onslaught of his tongue. At first, she only yielded - then she clumsily returned it. She felt their mouths as a tropical nucleus in all the world's chilled, swirling rain. They kissed, sometimes with bumped teeth or wrongly-angled heads, for a long time. The mouth that had shouted orders across the field was now warm and salty-sweet, surprisingly soft, on hers. The hands that had traced maps and felled darkspawn were splayed across her buttocks; tracing shivery notes down the length of her spine. Now that he was touching her - sharing the alignment of bone, the undulation of muscle, the privacy of pulses, the cracked code of mouth, fingers, ribs, midriff, throat - he recreated himself for her. For all that she had seen and argued with and fought beside him before, he might as well have been a complete stranger.

At last, he pulled away from her - but only to guide her back to shore, one hand firmly in the small of her back, the other around her shoulders, allowing for no hesitation. She felt an empty, strange, restless yearning - her will, her choices, adrift on strange tides. The wet, refreshed grass was soft beneath her bare feet - and, when he guided her down upon it, crushed stems released aromas of sage and violets. Rain caressed her skin; spiked against her belly. Staring up at him, she saw shadowy angles of arm, shoulder, hip, knee, limed with silver in the faint moonlight. One hand - rough as sandpaper, its touch gentle - drew teasing circles across her body. All her senses were exquisitely alive. She felt her body's history: the stick-thin adolescent, muted physical yearnings associated with sin, the touch of first blood on her thigh - the training that transformed it to a thing of pride and joy: sweaty, triumphant sessions of spar and her first friendships - and then the long-ago confrontation: she, Ser Guy, and an apostate who was more than he seemed; her discovery that her body could be stolen, sacked, hijacked. Dignity, sanctity, sanity: Blood Control could claim those at any time. The person she was lay in her choices - lay between her and the Maker - no-one but she could change it. The realization had at once given her strength and made her alien to her own flesh. Now she felt the texture of her own skin for the first time in - when? - years? She felt alive, awake, inside and out. She saw herself through the mirrors of Loghain's eyes: her plain, angular face, the muscles sharply defined in her long arms and legs; white, attenuated, like the armaments of some lethal machine. The unsought, unexpected awareness of herself as the object of his desire struck her as both absurd and wonderful. And, for all that she shared Loghain's disdain for the propensity of Wynne and the Warden to overanalyze, she now found herself indulging in that particular female trait. Before she could stop herself, she blurted:

"Why me? Why not a camp-follower? Women with soft skin and no scars…"

The hard mouth quirked, as though she amused him. The steel blue eyes looked backward into some immeasurable distance. One hand absently traced a line across her forehead: where Rylock did not have a scar. Half-sad, half-wistful, he murmured, "I like scars."

Once more, he relieved her of words. All around them the weather spoke of the world beyond language: rain like a hail of arrows shot straight down in anger - the craggy, brooding hills - the soft sighs of the dark water. Gradually - as he continued to kiss her, hands teasing the hollow of her throat, her ribs and their muscle-layer, the bones of her pelvis, the soft skin of her inner thighs, finally slipping inside her in a way Rylock herself had never dared - his desire filtered through to her. It satisfied her because it was stripped of emotion. She would not have known what to do with emotion. His eyes held only leaden, disinterested lust and the blank determination not to have his own will averted. Darkness spilled from them like a void overflowing, reaching outward to gather her in. The hammering beat of his heart thudded against hers; he was breathing in deep, heaving gusts that mingled with her own sharp panting sighs. Then he pulled his hand away and placed both palms upon her sweat-slick thighs, teasing her legs apart. He gave off heat like a banked furnace; she felt that immense bulk and power insinuating its purpose against her, crushing her body against grass and damp loam.

There was no time in his urgency for further preliminaries. With one hard thrust, he penetrated deeply. Pain ripped a gasp out of her. It was a red-hot skewer from groin to belly. She felt him stop suddenly, as though she had surprised or shocked him, but she only used the hesitation to roll with him, pressing him backward against the grass, straddling him. No more gentle with herself than he was, she impaled herself on him like a burning spear, her demands challenging his as she moved with him. In this valley of death, drenched in poison rain, encircled by ghost-shrouded hills, she wanted him inside her; this man of fire. With the souls of all the dead men floating on the air, she wanted him. She knew he felt the same. It was a dark, grim, galling celebration for both of them. Their love-making was the feast of starvelings: a thing of need and violence and the melancholy exaltation of life that counts its days.

Finally, Loghain stiffened and cried out, voice hoarse, and she felt the surge of warmth and wetness inside. Then he melted into slackness, face suffused, eyes unfocused. Rylock felt fiercely satisfied, the memories of death scorched away. Nonetheless, her body felt sand-blasted with the strange inrush of new knowledge and grief that came with the wreck of physical purity. She was scarcely aware of the hands that supported her - they seemed an echo of some dream - the kindness of strangers that had saved her after the Blood Mage's attack, when she could not have saved herself. She sank backwards, blended into the support of them, trusting this unknown person. The hands brushed against her eyelids with the lightness of moths, closing them. Caressed her shoulders - turned her - guided her down upon the grass. She smelled sage and violets - the space warmed by Loghain's body - the quiescent heat of him next to her. A soft rustle sounded - she pictured the hands, hovering like pale flying creatures, above her. After the burning heat, they were small, cool and gentle - they lightly brushed the scattered network of tiny scars across shoulders, chest and stomach: remnants of Uldred's ice storm. Teasing circles - soft lips upon her breasts - one hand upon the jagged scar across her belly. The mouth moved lower, running a light trail of kisses upon her inner thigh.

Rylock's whole body seemed to melt and flow and pulse with sensations that were like delirium in their dreamlike intensity. When mouth and tongue moved over the place Loghain had first explored she startled herself with her own high, sobbing cry. In another moment Rylock was gone, dissolved into straining, exalting yearning - a red-gold shower of flame - wild, strange sweetness. The moment expanded, fragmented - became shards of pleasure that lit her whole body with a warm afterglow. Heat and softness above her - a rustle of cloth and soft sigh. Rylock opened her eyes.

It was strange: two realities mingling, not quite cohered. The world of sensation and the face that swam into focus above her. Rylock had been delirious before - and it had been the same odd moment when she woke from fever to Boann's face and the hands that had tended her merged with memories of a girl she had envied as a child. This face was not young: upon the elegant, sharp features and remnants of great beauty were traced a map of fine lines and shadows. Rylock could not have said why the signs of age - of vulnerability - touched her, but they did. The lyrium-blue eyes were hooded, enigmatic.

"Wynne," she said - a statement of the obvious that the mage met with an inscrutable smile. Rylock felt the first tiny tendrils of mana flow back into the healer - tamped down after being spent on the cleansing fire, now beginning to trickle back in tiny increments from the Fade. Wynne took Rylock's hands in hers, guided her upright to a sitting position. They faced each other upon the soft grass, the hem of Wynne's robes brushing Rylock's hips in a sibilant whisper. She blinked in surprise at the realization she could actually _feel_ Wynne's hands through the scars: the building power, the flow of mana, felt like water. She had never touched a mage before except with steel.

Wynne's eyes seemed full, as though they might spill over. Rylock had the sense she was being drawn into them - realized with a sudden jolt that the quality she'd always feared about Wynne - the thing that had made her forget her own name when she looked at her - had not been her magic.

Tonight they were as they would be in the Golden City: not mage and Templar, just two women. And something in Rylock yearned to give pleasure as she had received it. The two conflicting realities brought a strange stillness of time and blankness of mind. She slowly reached forward, one hand at the nape of Wynne's neck...the other worked to undo the laces at the back of her robes. Rylock fumbled in the rainwashed darkness, clumsy and uncertain, unable to use vision in place of touch. It occurred to the pragmatic Templar that she could save a great deal of time with one honest pull on the materiel - in another moment the laces gave way and spared her that error. Wynne's sleeves and corset fell away, and Rylock caught her breath at the warmth and softness of her - the skin so pale it seemed almost luminous, the nipples washed roseate like dark buds. In the dark wetness that muted everything to gentle shadows, Rylock could just make out the full, almost languorous expression - the eyes heavy-lidded, their pure blueness like pools: they looked as though there was more behind them than another person could possibly ever know. Wynne reached out, arms curling around Rylock's naked back, and Rylock felt the touch as a shock - the slickness of rain-touched skin - the rippling aura that came with a mage's touch like a promise of dreams in colour. Wynne drew her close, and their lips met: her mouth was dry and soft, and tasted of the warmth of brandy and some strange, sweet herb. Kissing Wynne was very different from kissing Loghain: her lips and tongue were not demanding. It was playful, uncertain exploration. Wynne flicked her tongue lightly over Rylock's lips, and Rylock returned it. Their tongues met, and Rylock experienced the tingle all the way down her spine. As the kiss built, Wynne lay back upon the grass, pulling Rylock with her, guiding her hands downwards to caress her breasts. Wynne's breaths came faster, the gusts a warm ghost upon Rylock's tongue. The touch itself was like water - a silvery coolness - the mana field around Wynne's skin like a river about to burst its banks, passing into Rylock as though her skin were permeable, drenching dry, arid, lyrium-starved veins. Their new-found connection - the subtle unconscious reading of Wynne's desires - told Rylock what she wanted: her mouth followed the path of her hands, down the lines and hollows of Wynne's neck, across the sharp bone of her clavicle, to her breasts. Kissing her there was like nothing Rylock had ever imagined. No longer the buds of spring or the swell of summer, their heat and roundness was running to soft, sweet fat, like a pale luminous rose whose folds were beginning to fade in autumn. It did nothing to diminish the wonder or the glory. Rylock's mouth moved lower, tracing circles across the soft curve of her stomach. She felt, rather than saw, the pale ripples that danced upon sides and belly - the silvery striations that marked a woman who has borne a child. Memory rippled beneath the rush of sensation: Wynne's anger and tears at the loss of that child…Wynne's hands upon her own scars, carved by magic. Unconsciously, Rylock began to caress the scars in the same way, the first faint strands of understanding woven between them, fragile as gossamer thread. Empathy, apology, comfort…something. Wynne drew a sharp breath - some powerful emotion Rylock could not read spiked within her mana field. Lower still - to the inverted lily of a sexuality like her own: feeling and creation and beauty all kept inside, subtle and complex and secretive. Silken pale hair tickled Rylock's nose, fine and soft as down. Rylock's hands gripped Wynne's thighs…she felt them move from clumsy hesitation to surety, felt them become both strong and gentle. And then - slowly at first, not really knowing herself or Wynne or what she was doing very well - she began to pleasure Wynne as Wynne had pleasured her. A tide of feeling rose in the darkness. Unseeing, all her senses turned inward, Rylock was uncertain of which one of them she was: she heard Wynne's breathless sob, felt her bodyheat rising, her breath carrying soft, half-formed vowels; the sudden clutch of muscle, the suspense, shudder, capitulation…and at the same time felt the wet explosion of music and colour and feeling within herself.

She moved up the length of Wynne's body, the two of them wet with sweat and wonderfully, languorously exhausted. Tears had gathered at the corners of Wynne's brilliant blue eyes. With a gentleness she had not known she possessed, Rylock brushed them away. In a moment, the pale rain washed all traces from her face. A rustle behind Wynne - a body hewn from granite - shoulders like rocks and face all strength and shadow. Loghain was lying on his side, head propped in one palm, and on his face was the blank, sated, self-contained look of a man who has just devoured a huge meal and been unexpectedly offered desert. Rylock felt a ripple of annoyance at the arrogance: he was lying there, blatantly male, watching. She had not meant to entertain an audience. She glared - feeling her face fall into the lines of Mother Leanna. Bared teeth gleamed white in the darkness as his lips moved in an unrepentant grin. Rylock sat up, arms wrapped around her knees, suddenly uncertain. Caught between the tide of feeling that was Wynne and the raw power of Loghain, she felt unequal to the situation. Then Wynne sat up - placed one hand lightly, affectionately upon Rylock's thigh, and darted arrowy blue beams of playful challenge at Loghain from heavy-lidded eyes. Wynne's finding humour in the situation killed Rylock's annoyance; her amusement was a ripple of quicksilver laughter through Rylock's body.

There was an elemental femininity about Wynne that drew all eyes to her, like a lodestone: Rylock could not stop looking at her. She was leaning away from Rylock now, long beautiful back slightly curved, spine pale as dragonbone, chin resting in one hand, mirroring Loghain's posture. A network of lines lay like a silvery spiderweb across her many complex curves: the rain transmuted them to a glittering net. Lines of age, of life experience…of suffering. Rylock realized for the first time that Wynne, too, had fought dark mages: the marks that patterned her spine could have come from nothing else. Though it was full dark, Rylock could see her clearly. She shone faintly, marble-pale as a statue of Andraste: the white glow of magic visible to Rylock's senses. Behind her, the luminosity cast Loghain as a nascent darkness - the shadow of his deeds stretched behind them. Like Maferath, both General and traitor.

"Well, Loghain Mac Tir," Wynne said, voice full of teasing laughter - and something in her voice and in her hand on Rylock's thigh told the Templar that, after the night's events, she was seeing beyond their deeds - seeing them as people. It rang through her mind like an offer of forgiveness. For the first time in her life, she understood the other meanings of Andraste's Pyre.

Loghain's lips quirked in a smile. He had caught the mood - his eyes danced with amusement. His voice was rich, gravelly, warmed by the chuckle he felt.

"Well, Madam - do you think you owe me an apology for your earlier sharp words?"

Wynne drew Rylock close with one hand - the other played with the ridges and muscles of Loghain's chest…stomach…curled around his sex. His groin twitched to life in her hand. Loghain's eyebrows shot up: amazed to find himself suddenly and totally untired. Wynne nipped at his neck with her teeth. Her mana field was building, growing…to Rylock, she blazed like a white sun, bright as the Golden City before the magisters shrouded it in darkness.

"And is this," Wynne murmured - a throaty laugh spiced with mischief - "How you would like me to apologize?"

He cupped the heat and softness of her breasts in rough-hewn hands, running fingers more accustomed to wielding a sword in languorous circles. Her nipples glimmered under the translucence of rain like dark, staring eyes. His earlier urgency - the rage of his loss - was gone: he was lazy, relaxed - even playful. "Yes," he answered, no heavier than a sigh. The back of his right hand was covered in the myriad white lines of too many battles; he could no longer completely straighten his fingers. Wynne placed her own soft palm upon the thick dark hair of his wrist, not at all shy about showing him what she liked. To Rylock, she seemed consummately in control: she exuded a subtle power, a suggestion she could take the two of them, in whatever combination, and casually exhaust them both.

First cautiously, then playfully, then joyfully, the three found their own rhythm, their own dance. All that Wynne taught them that night, it seemed that by some strange, unforeseen alignment, they were discovering together. Rylock remembered the rest of the night as a series of dreamlike impressions…

…Her head resting between Wynne's breasts, Wynne's arms around her, one hand ruffling her hair, the other stroking her stomach, as Loghain bent to taste her. Rylock had never felt so cared for or so pampered… The feel of Loghain's skin was harder, rougher than Wynne's had been, the stubble across his jaw faintly prickly. His tongue brought a slow, heavy, blind rush of desire, like a thickening or clouding of blood. Vaguely, mind floating above the red-brown pulses, Rylock wondered at the contradictions in him: the brutal strength that had somehow been translated to adroitness. Who was the ruthless soldier whose normal means of expression was bellowed orders - and what had happened to that man now they were with the one who unexpectedly found exactly the right tender, flaming touch…

…Wynne on her knees, taking Loghain in her mouth, Rylock's fingers tangled through her hair…

…Wynne making love to her, while Loghain took the mage from behind…Loghain's face dark, suffused, his breaths a series of heaving gusts…Wynne's head thrown back, her face a rose of fire, while tiny cooling rivulets of rain trickled down like reptile tongues…

Once, the rain came even harder, drenching them…and Wynne, who had just demonstrated a move of supreme athleticism, complained that the cold weather would play havoc with her old bones. Rylock was startled to hear herself chuckle: "Don't blame me," she said dryly, "I just came out here to wash." Loghain's soft growl of laughter was warm…the three rocked together, their shared humour rippling from skin to skin like falling dominoes. It was a wave form, like water. Rylock had never expected to find anyone she could laugh with. Her own repressed, dead-pan, teak-hard humour - expressed only as a little dry commentary at the back of her mind, during the Templar recitation of "Ours not to question why…" - when faced with the orders of incompetent superiors - during Mother Leanna's chastisements - was a guilty secret. To find the same sense of humour shared by Wynne and Loghain was a strange homecoming - as unexpected as everything else about this night. Their shared experience spoke together without need for words. Violence had created Loghain - it sustained him, was required of him. He was as much a product of his circumstances as herself and Wynne. All three knew the routines, the stone walls, the confinement and the glory of duty. All three used sarcasm as a way of enduring…but in Wynne the humour became teasing, playful, and she carried the two dour idealists along with her, taught them that lovemaking could be urgent, tender - or a lighthearted expression of joy. At last, they lay quietly, allowing their bodies to adjust to each other, filling the little spaces, touching in every place it was possible to touch. Wynne was lying on her side, with her back pressed into Loghain's front, softly curled, like a flower that has closed inward after a day of brash sunlight. Her arm lay across Rylock's stomach. Rylock lay staring upward into vast unfathomable peace, the grandeur and distance of the night sky and its encircling arc of hills and mountains anchoring her like a ship in safe harbour. The rain had stopped: the clouds had passed to reveal a network of brilliant stars, pure and clean and precise as Loghain's strategies. Rylock saw the march of men…the battlefield divisions…she was a ship floating on blue water, a dark captain at its helm…the water was turning to gold, the colour of belief…she tried to catch it but it ran through her fingers like the sands of an hourglass…

…_It's dark, and I'm on a bed of rushes - and the bed is wet. Wait - this can't be my bed: my bed's in the corner…_

Rylock woke to grass and darkness...to the softness of an arm on hers and the sound of slow, steady breathing that was not her own, while things that felt like a beautiful dream, but were proved true memories, vivid as present time, crashed and stumbled through her mind. She carried Wynne and Loghain with her - under her skin - could feel each touch, each remembrance of cries and soft breath and words spoken. _Did you know I could dream like that? I didn't..._ She could only think backward - could not think beyond the present - knew that beyond the glory would be its exact counterweight in shame. To think beyond was to think of language: either the desolate language of confession or the anti-language of silence: of lying to the Maker, to herself. To think into language was to think into the changed world. The world that she had changed.

She sat up quietly, moved Wynne's arm gently away from her body, careful not to wake her. Then she rose. Her long legs and sinewy, hard-muscled arms felt clumsy as pieces of wood; her normally short, sleek hair was now standing upright, filthy with mud and grass. _Now I really do look like a broomstick... _her own flippancy both amused and appalled her. Quickly, efficiently, she strode to the water's edge, immersed herself in the freezing greyness, and began to wash. Her bones were cold and stiff from the ground and the wet...no matter. That was of no more importance than the fact that her tunic, trousers and boots were soaked through. They would dry on her skin, under the armour. She struggled into them. At last encased herself in the silver blaze of duty: the steel tower of belief that went on and on, no matter how she herself had fallen short. Then she headed away from the two sleeping figures, towards camp. She did not look back at the pale figures, entwined on the grass, but she felt Loghain in the strength of the gnarled, leafless oak, the craggy circle of distant mountains, and Wynne in the wind that shifted at random from the gusts of a playful child, the mournful wail of a lonely seeker, the gentleness of a mother, the icy squall of acerbic temper.

Rylock reached grey, triangular tents, limed with water droplets that gleamed in starlight. Inside her own, the impenetrable darkness held the heavy, resonant peace of black robes. She moved unerringly toward the back, the spare layout so familiar she did not need to see…a spiked glimmer along the far wall an oblique shadow, rich with meaning. The sunshield rested upon a stand, and before it, the scabbarded sword placed in the position of Andraste's stake formed the sacred cross. The hard prayer mat below. Rylock struck flint and tinder: the steel symbol flared to life in burnished gold, studded with equidistant points like a blazing flower, exploding with beauty, with meaning. Her eyes were drawn inexorably to the only other furniture beside her sleeping roll: a small bedside table, upon which stood the copy of the Chant she had owned since childhood and the vial of lyrium placed with the discipline of Templars the night before. Electric blue…the colour of Wynne's eyes. Rylock felt, once more, the tidal wave of life, of creation, that was Wynne's magic…and its counterpoint: the pure anti-magic of the light as she knew it - sterile, clean, precise as the stars outside. She knew she would never be worthy of that power again - could not take into herself the transubstantiation, share that communion, until she had confessed. She turned to the mat, bowed her head, bent knee, rested her forehead upon her clasped hands.

After yesterday's battle, her knees felt like those of an old, old woman - it was as though she knelt on hot coals. Rylock confessed everything to the Maker - because she never did lie, not to Him and not to herself. That was something Revered Mother Leanna had always condemned about her: the refusal to seek favour, to make excuses. Her pride had brought her chastisements and her stubborn silences had tripled them. _I don't tell lies... _So Rylock told the truth here: that she had been neither forced nor tricked - that she had wanted this - that she could not bring herself to wish it undone.

At once, this unexpected, unlooked for treasure at the back of her mind filled her with joy - and a hollow ache of loss. She did not believe the Maker would forgive this breaking of her vows. Wynne had given her an intimation of human forgiveness - the first she had ever known - but His demands were harder; His expectations higher. All the years of hoping she would be worthy - of the light in her shadow and the support when she fought - all ended. Could she even call herself a Templar, do the Maker's work, having sinned in this way?

That question was ended almost before it began. Rylock did not follow the Maker because she was good but because He was; did not serve Him for reward but because He was beautiful. And even if there had been no Maker, she fought mages out of conviction: because she knew in her body and mind what maleficarum could do to the innocent.

The memory lay in her mind like a dark jewel: deeply precious, deeply wrong; seldom to be looked at, always to be treasured; never to be regretted - and never to be repeated. Perhaps, if she had been like Wynne - known as Wynne the Wicked at the Circle Tower long before she became Wynne the Wise - she would have been able to combine duty with pleasure; certainly Loghain had no trouble. But the night had meant more to Rylock - she could not do this again, not without compromising herself.

Finally, she rose, took purposeful steps towards the bedside table, grasped the blue vial reverently, knelt once more before the steel cross.

…_This is Thy light, taken into me; this is my body, given up to Thee_

_Thy will, not mine, be done…_

The dry whiteness moved down veins in a network that seared away the sense of aliveness in her body, the flesh-memories of hard and gentle hands upon her skin...she was - not forgiven, but cleansed and made new, as light and empty as a crystal glass in sunlight. Inside, her veins had the fresh, washed feel of a spring morning after rain.

Rylock checked herself in her small mirror before she left her tent. It was still her face: the plain face, dark eyes that let no-one in without resistance, features at imperfect peace with themselves, marked by austere conviction and reticent passion - her own utter certainty that there was no higher purpose for her life than to burn it away in service to the Maker. No sign of what had happened showed on the outside. Thus reassured, she rose, buckled on sword and sunshield, and strode from the tent towards the camp, stirring to life in the first faint light of dawn...

* * *

><p>... "Wait!" Rylock called the Sister back. Her voice came out even weaker than before - a dry, dusty shadow like the creaking of old hinges. It embarrassed her. She tried again. A soft footfall - a blurred sight above her head. Somehow, the Sister's appearance had changed - morphed from what it had been a moment ago. Her pale hair was now dark - there were lines around her eyes and mouth that had not been there before. No matter. Rylock focused on the important issue. "I wish to add something to my message. There's something the Warden needs to know - about her research..."<p>

The Sister merely looked blank. Frustrated, Rylock snapped, "The First Warden's message - I only just - "

Carefully, the woman said, "Knight-Commander - the last message you sent went out a month ago. Nothing will get through now. The General of Ferelden's armies marches on Montsimmard as we speak. I wouldn't want to be in the Warden's shoes right now..."

Rylock understood. Time in Wayside Ward was dislocated, permeable. It had no days, no nights, no seasons - it was the time of the grave.

As her mind swam in delirium - backwards, forwards again, Rylock murmured:

"Warden - you were right about the research…I understand it now. There's something you've missed…so simple…if only I had time to tell you…"

"Ellen," That was the sharp voice of the Revered Mother, the familiar childhood name that Wynne had used…so softly…"It's time to confess to the Holy Maker, not the Warden. Are you sorry for all your sins?"

Sins? A wave of indignation threatened to smother pain-wracked lungs…_what sins! I've kept every catechism from my childhood up…_

Ghosts writhed upon the pale sheets.

…_The boy, Anerin, pleading for his life…the red stroke of her sword…_

…_Thomas Amell, face screwed up in __an agonized attempt to recall something that slipped from his grasp. He had fought to regain his lost faculties with the hopeless tenacity of the damned…_

Rylock stared upward into vast, unknowable spaces, tiny sparks of memories flickering like seeds of lightning, like wild birds pecking…thinning out into a white nullity.

"I…am…sorry…"

…_The play of light upon Wynne's soft skin; the hunter's glitter in Loghain's eyes as he moved between them…_

"…for all - but one."

* * *

><p><em>Song inspirations for this one are:<em>

_Wayside Ward: The Stones - Sister Morphine_

_The Wounded: Metallica - One_

_The Warden's Party: Fairport Convention - Farewell, Farewell_

_Loghain/Wynne/Rylock: U2 - Heartland_

_Rylock's Prayer: Daniel Lanois - The Maker_


End file.
